Digital conversion for customer expectations of tomorrow

Within just nine months, EagleBurgmann converted the ERP system "SAP ECC" to the new S/4HANA SAP platform at several locations in Europe and Asia. In record time, the sealing specialist thus created a further information technology prerequisite for fundamental digital change and passed the next milestone in its digitalization strategy.

New technological options are also changing the expectations of the customers and users of industrial sealing solutions. S/4HANA is an important building block to expand the service range with digital solutions that offer customers further added value.

Switching to S/4HANA early on means that EagleBurgmann can now use modern functionalities to increase process efficiency. Harmonized master data now facilitates the introduction of new applications that access a uniform database and enable, for example, the comprehensive presentation of service history and the predictive maintenance of seals.

The "ECC" platform will no longer be supported by SAP after 2025. "But especially the medium-sized companies are greatly concerned about the switch to S/4HANA," says Tobias Lange, CIO of EagleBurgmann. "The larger the existing SAP system, the more users work with it, the higher the risk of damaging the core business." Nevertheless, EagleBurgmann set itself the goal of mastering the migration of the ERP system including the reorganization of central IT infrastructures between two group balance sheets as early as 2019.

Expertise from all angles

After the start of the project in January 2019, the system went live the following October. The careful preparation and implementation was carried out by a core team of IT staff with selective, limited support from external partners. The project team opted for a pragmatic, hybrid procedure based on the Brownfield approach, i.e. the digitalization of existing processes and the simultaneous introduction of new functionalities in order to optimize processes.

These were exciting months for the project staff. It required the expertise of each individual, and close cooperation with the specialist departments was crucial to the success of the project. "Above all, returning extensive non-standard solutions to the SAP standard only works if you have good interaction. Which functions are required? Which are "nice-to-have?" Is the process correct and up-to-date? How can the required functions be mapped using SAP standard tools? These questions can only be clarified satisfactorily for everyone by having a positive and regular exchange of views from different angles," sums up project employee Uta Schubert.

The digital linking of all corporate divisions without system discontinuity, from sales and procurement to the finished product including service, will continue to be a comprehensive challenge in the coming years. The goal is to meet customer expectations of tomorrow as comprehensively and individually as possible while accelerating the entire process chain and making it more efficient at the same time.